The Green Jobs Boondoggle

When it comes to direct waste tied to GGS jobs, the Department of Energy (DOE), which produces no energy, knows no peer.

In early September 2011, the Washington Post reported that the 2009 stimulus plan's $38.6 billion loan-guarantee program targeting green energy companies "has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount." Let's see; $18.8 billion (the actual amount disbursed at the time) divided by 3,545 works out to $5.3 million per job. We'd have been much better off paying each new worker a couple hundred grand a year just to stay home.

Oh, but this is all supposedly okay, because these are only "loan guarantees." Most of the money will get paid back, and the government won't lose all that much, right? Wrong. Think Solyndra, Beacon Power, Ener1, and at least a half-dozen others. And they're not done: The Wall Street Journal reported on March 23 that DOE "has placed nearly one-third of its clean-energy loan portfolio (10 of 32) on an internal 'watch list' for possible violations of terms or other concerns." I suspect that there's little reason to feel good about the other 22.

Subsequent events have shown that the administration's green jobs obsession has been a monstrous waste of time and money on two levels. First, experience in the real world outside of rigged computer models based on missing raw data has shown that the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and alleged global warming is weak at best. CO2 has been increasing, but there's been no net warming since 1998.

Second, fossil-fuel resource discoveries and recent advances in extraction technology have been so dramatic that, according to a recent report by Citigroup analysts, it is not unreasonable to believe that "North America's production of oil and natural gas liquids (can) almost double to 26.6m barrels a day by 2020."

That won't happen if Obama and his bunch remain in charge after January 20, 2013 -- which is yet another reason why the nation's voters can't allow it to happen.